The furious will that had animated him through all his solitary years resented this intrusion, and was in revolt against the reason and the logic of his heart. That will in him had reduced the social system to its logical end, the destruction of the young by the old, and would allow his creative faculty no other material. It must have nothing but a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness. His will had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must come, since splendour wrung from desolation must end in desolation. And suddenly his will was defied by this amazing girl, all youth, all joy, revealing the eternal loveliness of the human spirit that endures though Empires fade away and societies come to chaos. Very, very slowly, his will, which drew its force from the hypnotic influence of horror, was thrust back, and light crept into his imagined world, flowers blossomed in it, trees swayed in the wind, larks went soaring above green hills blazing with yellow gorse, birds hopped to their nests and sang, dogs barked and gambolled with delight--all his frozen memories slowly melted, and sweet and simple pleasures came to view to make a setting meet for Clara Day. And he remembered simple people with a steady kindness, people like the little bookseller who knew their world but believed in its redeeming goodness, people like a woman who had once nursed him through a terrible illness and had never ceased to pray for him, families where in his lonely youth in London he had been welcome--all these he remembered and grouped round Clara to make a better and a simpler world. When his agony had run its course, and his old hypnotic will was broken, he told himself that he must be content that Clara should be the mistress of his imagination, since he had wrecked his own life and had nothing to offer her. Obviously she had found the world good. Nothing in her was theatrical, nothing baffled. He must reconcile himself to the acceptance of those two days with her as in themselves perfect, sufficient, and fruitful. Indeed, what need was there of more? They had met as profoundly as they could ever hope to meet. She would marry her lord, and gather about herself all the good and pleasant things of the earth, and he could return to his work and build it up anew.